NEWS ROUNDUP

Open-range zoning to end in Rio Verde Grazing livestock between homes in the foothills near Rio Verde will become taboo, as plans were announced this week to eradicate the area's open-range designation. Maricopa County Supervisor Don Stapley and state Sen. Carolyn Allen, R-Scottsdale, announced they would change the rules for Rio Verde Foothills, a 20-square-mile county island where residents have complained for years about loose horses and cows. Stapley and Allen said they were startled to learn the open-range zoning in Rio Verde Foothills benefits a few property owners who have long received agricultural exemptions on property taxes....
Suit protests grazing closures Two southern Utah counties have filed a lawsuit contesting grazing closures in the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. Garfield and Kane counties argue that, since 1999, the Bureau of Land Management has permanently discontinued livestock grazing on over 240,000 acres in the monument without notifying Congress, as required by the Federal Lands and Policy Act. Such closures have put pressures on individual ranchers, and on the economies of both counties, the suit said....
It's Not All Blue Skies for Drilling Project When he turned Mt. Rushmore into his granite canvas, sculptor Gutzon Borglum wrote that the faces of Presidents Washington, Jefferson, Roosevelt and Lincoln would remain visible, Lord willing, "until the wind and the rain alone shall wear them away." Borglum's vision endures in the Black Hills of South Dakota about 130 miles from here, but for nearly a month every year, it may soon become harder to see the famous faces through the man-made haze generated by the addition of 50,000 gas wells in northeastern Wyoming and southeastern Montana. It is just one of several ways in which the largest expansion of natural gas drilling approved by the federal government is expected to degrade air quality in the region that today has the clearest skies in the lower 48 states. Government scientists expect that the drilling expansion, combined with a planned increase in coal mining and oil drilling in the northern Great Plains, will nearly double smog-forming emissions and greatly increase particulate matter pollution in a thinly populated region that has produced less than 3% of the amount of unhealthful air found in Los Angeles. The BLM moved forward with the project despite its own air quality analysis, which concluded that the pollution would cloud views at more than a dozen national parks and monuments, exceed federal air quality standards in several communities and cause acid rain to fall on mountain lakes, where it could harm fish and wildlife....
‘Wolfmen' reflect on controversy As he read through the e-mails at his office, one from a wolf activist caught Ed Bangs' attention. It arrived shortly after Bangs made the difficult decision that wolves preying on livestock had to be killed. ‘‘May your putrid corpse rot in hell,'' the e-mail said. He shrugged it off. It wasn't the first message of its kind; it wouldn't be the last. The business of wolf management requires a thick skin, said Bangs, the federal government's wolf recovery coordinator for the region. ‘‘You can't take it personal, or you'd be a raving lunatic.'' Bangs, along with Joe Fontaine and Carter Niemeyer, have long been the public faces for what has arguably been one of the most contentious conservation efforts of the last century — returning the gray wolf to the wild in the Northern Rockies....
Protection waived for jumping mouse The Preble's meadow jumping mouse, once seen as a costly impediment to development, is now viewed by the government as a critter that never really existed - and is no longer in need of federal protection under the Endangered Species Act. The Interior Department said Friday that new DNA research shows the 9-inch mouse, which can launch itself a foot and a half into the air and switch direction in mid-flight, is probably identical to another variety of mouse common enough not to need protection. Manson and other Interior officials cited a peer-reviewed but unpublished study by the Denver Museum of Nature and Science suggesting the Preble's mouse is genetically identical to the Bear Lodge meadow jumping mouse. The study was paid for by Interior's Fish and Wildlife Service, the Energy Department, the state of Wyoming and the Denver museum. Interior officials acknowledged that 14 peer reviewers had split 8-6 to narrowly support the study's conclusions....
Stream setback proposal draws fire from landowners Developers, ranchers and other landowners are fighting a proposed law that would prohibit them from building homes and other structures near the state's rivers and streams. Sen. Bob Hawks, D-Bozeman, is carrying a bill drafted by environmental groups that would establish a 30-yard building setback from the high-water mark of streams and a 100-yard setback from the high-water mark of rivers. Critic Bill Myers said passage of the bill would ruin any chances of developing his property, the money from which would pay for his retirement. Myers owns a small chunk of land along the Bigfork Bay in Bigfork. "All my eggs are in a small basket this bill would crush," he told lawmakers Thursday....
Norton: Cooperation works for water, species President Bush has a bold, clear vision for meeting the water supply and endangered species challenges facing Western communities. Interior Secretary Gale Norton delivered that key message to 300 members of the Colorado Water Congress here Friday, emphasizing the effectiveness of cooperative, locally driven partnerships in which the federal government works with stakeholders as catalyst and coordinator to resolve natural resource issues. "Americans have always looked to the West with hope, and they should do so now in this new term of the administration,” Norton said. “The president envisions preventing crises by innovative thinking and long-term planning; avoiding long years of litigation by cooperative agreements and replacing costly laws with common-sense legislation.”....
Navratilova backs PETA sheep effort Martina Navratilova is helping an animal rights group in its campaign against an Australian sheep farming practice. The People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals released the contents of a letter Thursday that it said Navratilova wrote to Prime Minister John Howard over the practice of mulesing. The procedure - named after inventor and rancher J.H. Mules - involves slicing flesh and wool away from the sheep's rump to prevent blowflies from laying their eggs in the skin....
'Across the Generations' According to cowboy Chuck Milner, the best things to raise on a ranch are children, and several of Thursday's performances showed the ranching culture is being passed on to the next generation. Milner and his children, Hallie, 11, and Cody, 8, performed songs Thursday at the Elko Convention Center. Milner played the guitar while Hallie played the fiddle and Cody the mandolin. He said traditions are meant to be handed down. Another of the cowboy poets, Wylie Gustafson, said he has his father to thank for his love of singing and poetry. "I would not be here right now if it wasn't for him singing songs to us at night," Wylie said. He and his father, Rib Gustafson, performed several songs Thursday in the Great Basin College Theatre....